The present invention generally relates to honing of cutting devices by which components such as slicer blades are sharpened, honed or ground along their respective cutting edges. The invention is particularly well-suited for honing, grinding and/or sharpening blades for slicing food products such as large sticks, chubs, loaves or pieces of meat, luncheon meat, cheese and the like. These slicing blades typically have a curved cutting surface or edge portion along all or a substantial part of the periphery of the slicer blade. The invention includes use of a cam member that has a curved pathway at least a portion of which emulates the profile or peripheral shape of the slicing edge of the blade. One or more honing spindle assemblies, preferably two of them, are associated with cam followers which engage and follow the camming surface of the cam member. Rotating honing wheels of these honing spindle assemblies closely follow the peripheral edge portion of the blade to effect the honing action in a uniform and accurate manner. The invention also allows substantially simultaneous honing of generally oppositely facing ground surfaces to minimize the presence of burring on the finished, fully honed blade.
Slicing equipment for foods and the like are in use within the food processing industry and in other situations when elongated products need to be severed into thin slices. This is especially the case for food processing plants wherein finished products such as sliced luncheon meats, sliced bacon, sliced meat cuts, sliced cheese and the like are processed through a large industrial-scale slicer. In a typical operation, these slices are then packaged and distributed for retail sale as convenient ready-to-sell units. Commercial slicer equipment that is used for slicing and sometimes also stacking and weighing the slices are or have been available from well-known manufacturers such as Cashin, Anco, Formax, Great Lakes and Thurne. Each manufacturer generally uses a blade or blades of differing shape and/or sizing. The blades can have peripheral shapes which are circular, involute, spiral, and the like, each of which has a curved surface of constant radius or varying radii along the periphery of the cutting surface. Each blade is somewhat large and has substantial area that is at least nominally flat.
Some of this slicer equipment provide honing devices attached to the slicer itself. This approach is taken in order to afford an apparent advantage of achieving honing through an on-line approach which avoids the need to remove the large blade from the slicer in order to hone or sharpen it. However, this on-line approach has disadvantages which often outweigh this advantage. When honing or sharpening on-line, the resultant grinding dust or particles will often be deposited at locations which could find their way into the food product. Accordingly, it is essential to totally sanitize entire areas of the slicing equipment in addition to cleaning of the blade itself. Furthermore, the slicer, and in many cases a production line of which it is but one component, must be shut down during the entire course of the sharpening and clean-up operations.
The present invention avoids these disadvantages by providing a honing apparatus that is totally removed from the large slicing equipment. By this off-line approach, the slicing equipment and food processing line of which it may be a component need to be shut down for only the time that is required to remove the dull blade and replace it with another, previously sharpened or honed or ground blade. In addition, once thus installed, only this fresh blade needs to be treated for sanitary reasons, such as by simply squirting appropriate aqueous liquid onto the blade which had been thoroughly cleaned and sanitized and at a location remote from the food processing area to remove grinding particles and the like prior to mounting it onto the slicer equipment. This approach minimizes downtime and does not have the handling constraints which are characteristic of on-line devices.
Most slicer blades have ground cutting surfaces on both the top and the bottom edges of the peripheral cutting portion of the blade. Various honing or sharpening approaches in the past have proceeded with the honing of one ground edge at a time. This typically causes the formation of a burr on the other surface. Then, when the other surface is honed, a burr is formed on the first surface. This leads to alternative honing (after the first honing step) through burrs formed during honing of an opposite surface, typically leaving a burr on the cutting surface opposite of the last-honed surface.
Another difficulty which is often encountered in sharpening large blades such as the large slicer blades for commercial meat slicers is the difficulty in maintaining flatness of blades having such an extensive peripheral edge. In this regard, it is important that the blade be as flat as possible during honing, and when needed, accommodate blade body curvatures or cavities while maintaining a flat peripheral edge portion. If not, the honed ground surface typically will exhibit a non-uniform width along the peripheral extent of the cutting edge of the blade. Another challenge for off-line honers is having them arranged so as to be suitable for use with any one of the variety of differently sized and/or shaped blades that are required for the various slicers in commercial use. Each such blade has a curved periphery, but curve size and shape varies from blade to blade. This difficulty is particularly evident when a processing plant utilizes slicers of different manufacturers and/or of different sizes.
In summary, the present invention addresses each of these problems or difficulties by providing for off-line honing of slicer blades. The apparatus of the invention includes a cam member having a curved pathway or camming surface that is shaped to follow a curved cutting surface of a particular type of cutting blade. A variety of such cam members can be provided, each one of which being sized and shaped for a particular style and size of slicer blade. Various such blades and cam members are interchangeably mounted on a rotation assembly that rotates a properly sized and shaped cam member and its corresponding cutter blade together. During such rotation, a cam follower of a honing spindle assembly engages the cam member in order to thereby assist in directing a rotating honing wheel or the like along the blade surface to be honed, sharpened or ground. A suitable biasing assembly ensures contact is maintained between the cam follower and the cam member. In this way, the rotating honing wheel or the like closely follows the curvature of the particular blade being sharpened. In a preferred embodiment, at least two honing spindle assemblies are provided, and a top peripheral edge as a well as bottom peripheral edge of the slicer blade are honed substantially simultaneously in order to provide a finished honed blade that is deburred.
It is a general object of the present invention to provide for improved off-line honing of slicer blades.
Another object of this invention is to provide an improved off-line honing apparatus and method which reduces down-time and minimizes sanitization procedures associated with maintaining a sharp and properly honed blade on commercial slicers.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an improved off-line honing apparatus and method which avoids the need for total sanitation procedures associated with slicer blade sharpening.
Another object of this invention is to provide an improved honing apparatus and method which reduces down time for blade sharpening to the time required to exchange slicer blades on the slicing apparatus.
Another object of the present invention is to provide improved honing of slicer blades that minimizes the formation of burrs.
Another object of this invention is to provide an improved apparatus and method for attaining superior sharpness levels on large slicer blades.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an improved honing apparatus and method which maintains close tolerances with respect to blade flatness and particularly cutting edge flatness, while forming honed or ground cutting edge surfaces which are of substantially uniform width throughout their respective peripheral lengths.
These and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will be clearly understood through a consideration of the following detailed description.